How Spanish companies buy: the B2B buyer in Spain

Small businesses, mid-sized companies, large corporations and the public sector decide in different ways. The most common entry mistake is treating them as the same customer at different sizes.

Inside each row, the real map of roles is built with the decision-maker map, account by account and segment by segment.

In a Spanish small business the owner-manager (the gerente) holds almost every role: spots the need, evaluates, negotiates and signs. That shortens the sale in number of people, but not in time. The owner decides on little formal information and a lot of informal input: a customer, a long-time supplier, their advisor, a peer from the industry association.

Three traits matter before the first call:

• They buy from people before companies. They want to know who will serve them and whether that person will still be there a year from now. A change of contact halfway through the relationship reads as a lack of seriousness.
• Their risk is personal. In a thirty-person company, a bad supplier decision is paid for by the owner, with their own money and their standing in front of the team. That is why the proof that weighs most is someone like them who already buys from you.
• Price gets negotiated, but it does not come first. The negotiation arrives, often a hard one. Before it does, the owner has to have decided you are a serious option.

With small businesses, referrals, the distributor or installer who already sells to them, and their industry associations and trade fairs work better than large-scale cold outreach. If your entry depends on small-business volume, the channel matters more than your own sales team: read the guide to distribution channels in Spain first.

Foreign suppliers misread the mid-sized company most often: it looks like a big small business and decides like one, but with a large company's processes. There is usually a general manager with a lot of weight, professional functional heads and, above a certain size, a procurement lead who does not decide what gets bought but can stop how it gets bought.

The usual split of roles looks like this. The sales or operations director feels the problem and sponsors the purchase. The finance director reviews the return, the payment terms and the supplier risk, and holds a veto even if it is rarely used. Procurement, where it exists, asks for comparable, like-for-like quotes. The general manager signs, and in family companies in their second or third generation may consult the family on larger purchases.

What changes compared with the small business is the type of proof. The owner of a small business trusts a reference. The finance director of a mid-sized company wants to see the numbers run on their own cost structure. The useful tool at this stage is promise and proof: one promise per role and, for each, a proof that role accepts.

If the company is organized by regional branches (delegaciones), remember that the branch manager sponsors and head office approves.

In large Spanish groups, buying is professionalized. There is a corporate procurement department with categories, category managers, supplier portals and a vendor approval process (homologación) the supplier must pass before it can receive a purchase order. Vendor approval is not paperwork. It is the risk filter, and it is where many foreign suppliers stall.

What an approval process asks for varies by company and category, but the pattern repeats:

• Corporate and tax details, annual accounts and some proof of solvency.
• Quality, environmental or information security certifications, depending on the category.
• Insurance policies, data protection compliance and, more and more, sustainability and cybersecurity questionnaires.
• A named contact for the relationship and a clear way to invoice and to raise claims.

Which documents you can provide from your current structure, and whether you need a Spanish entity or representative, is for your corporate lawyer and your tax advisor to decide. What is strategy is deciding whether the large account is your first wave or your third. It gives you a powerful reference, but it demands a long cycle and documentation ready in advance. For many foreign companies the sensible sequence is mid-sized companies first and the large account later.

The budget calendar also rules, and the pilot is the natural way in: one well-scoped pilot, with a success criterion signed before it starts, is worth more than ten presentations.

Public procurement in Spain is governed by the Law 9/2017 on Public Sector Contracts (Ley de Contratos del Sector Público), and tenders from the central government and many other bodies are published on the Public Sector Procurement Platform. In public buying, the buying center is formalized in the tender documents and the award committee, and the commercial relationship does not replace the procedure.

Solvency requirements, classification and how to submit bids are worked out with a public procurement lawyer. From a strategy standpoint there is one question: is the public sector a priority segment or a distraction? If it is a priority, it is treated as a segment with its own team, calendar and measurement. If not, it is left out of the first-year plan, in writing.

The legal framework is clear. Law 3/2004 on combating late payment in commercial transactions sets, unless the contract says otherwise, a payment term of 30 calendar days from receipt of the goods or delivery of the service. The parties can extend it by agreement, but never beyond 60 calendar days. The same law provides for late-payment interest and a fixed €40 compensation for collection costs when the debtor pays late.

Practice has more nuance than the law:

• Fixed payment days. Many companies pay on one or two set days each month. An invoice that arrives a day late can wait almost a month for the next cycle.
• Their own instruments. Promissory notes (pagarés), confirming and bank transfers coexist. Confirming is a reverse factoring arrangement: the customer offers the supplier early payment through its bank, at a cost the supplier bears. Find out which one the customer uses before you set a price.
• Prior acceptance. If the contract provides for verification or acceptance of the service, the clock starts after it. A project without a clear acceptance milestone is a receivable without a date.

One useful data point that almost no foreign supplier checks: Spanish corporations disclose their average payment period to suppliers in the notes to their annual accounts, under the 2016 ICAC resolution. Those accounts are filed with the Commercial Registry (Registro Mercantil). Before negotiating with a large account, look at how long it really takes to pay its suppliers. It is the best starting benchmark you will get.

The law sets the ceiling. The customer sets the practice. Your price has to be built on the practice.

For a Dominican company the Spanish framework usually feels more predictable. For a US company used to net 30 paid on time, it can feel slow. In both cases the collection period is a pricing and cash variable: it is decided in your pricing strategy, not in the last week of negotiation. How to pursue an unpaid invoice is a question for your lawyer.

A lot, and in a specific way. The question a foreign supplier hears most in a first meeting in Spain is not about the product. It is "¿a quién tenéis en España?" ("who do you have in Spain?", meaning which Spanish customers can vouch for you). An international reference impresses, but it does not replace a local reference from the same industry and of similar size. The buyer wants to be able to call someone they know, or at least someone whose name they recognize.

That has three planning consequences:

1. Pick your first customers for their value as references, not only for their size. A mid-sized company that is well known in its industry is worth more for the second wave than a large one that will not let you name it.
2. The relationship is built before the offer. Industry trade fairs, business associations, chambers of commerce and useful content open conversations that cold outreach does not.
3. A local partner is a shortcut to trust. A distributor, an integrator or an agent with an existing book of customers lends you their reputation. In exchange, they control the relationship with the end customer. That is an entry model decision, not a sales detail, and it is covered in the guide to entering the Spanish market.

Relationships matter in Spain, but they depend less on the decision-maker's family circle than in the Dominican Republic, and they give less weight to the published case study than in the United States. Translating that difference is the job of the local layer.

A supplier that enters "Spain" without choosing a region spreads its effort thin. The differences that matter are not about temperament. They are about economic structure and where decisions are made:

The practical consequence is to choose one entry region per segment, not to scatter across the map. The right region is the one that concentrates the priority segment and has a partner or a reference available. That decision is made with the winnability matrix, and the rollout in waves is covered in multi-market launch strategy.

Castilian Spanish is the official language of the State and the working language of commerce across the country. Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution makes the other Spanish languages official in their own regions, according to each region's statute of autonomy. You do not need to speak them to sell B2B, but you should know when they help.

• Materials and website. In Catalonia, the Valencia region, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country, Navarre and Galicia, offering materials in the co-official language when the customer uses it in its own communication is read as respect and as commitment to the market. To get started, it is not a requirement.
• Public sector. Regional and local governments can publish and process tenders in their co-official language. Your public procurement lawyer will tell you what that means in each case.

For a Dominican or other Latin American company there is a nuance that gets underestimated: peninsular Spanish and Caribbean Spanish share a language but not always a commercial vocabulary. Computadora and ordenador (computer), carro and coche (car), chequear and revisar (to check), mercadeo and marketing, cotización and presupuesto (a quote). None of them is wrong, but a website and a proposal written in the Spanish buyer's vocabulary read as if they were made for that buyer. Have someone from Spain review your materials before launch.

For a US company: English works with some large groups and with technical profiles, but it is not the language of the purchase. Proposal, contract, invoice and support in Spanish are a condition for competing.

The first meeting with a Spanish company exists so the buyer can decide whether it is worth continuing to talk to you, not to close. Showing up with forty slides and a closing proposal has the opposite effect.

Starting patterns for the meeting

• Form of address. The informal tú is common in many industries and generations, but a first contact with the general manager of a traditional company may call for the formal usted. Follow the customer's lead.
• Agenda. An agenda is accepted and appreciated, but the conversation will leave it. Spanish buyers ask questions, interrupt and describe their situation. That digression is information, not wasted time.
• Hours. Many companies protect the midday lunch window, and the summer or intensive schedule (jornada intensiva) shortens afternoons in July and August. Ask before proposing a time.
• Calendar. August, the weeks from Christmas through Epiphany on January 6, Holy Week and long holiday weekends (puentes), which vary by region, slow decisions down. A cycle that looked like three months can become five if it crosses August.
• What to leave behind. A short written summary after the meeting, with what was agreed and the next step with a date. It is one of the things that most sets a serious supplier apart.

The follow-up

"Ya os diremos algo" ("we'll get back to you") is not a no, but it is not a yes either. Follow up consistently and without pressure, each time with something useful to add: a question answered, a data point from their industry, a new reference. Automated sequences of five emails in ten days read as pushiness and close doors.

What does work is agreeing on the next step before each meeting ends. If the buyer will not accept any next step with a date, the opportunity is not at proposal stage, whatever the CRM says.

Almost never the product. The alarm comes from small signals that, added up, answer the opening question badly: if this goes wrong, who answers for it? This is the list we review with every company entering the market.

None of these signals, on its own, kills a deal. Three together do. Review them before you go to market.

A multinational and a small business in the same country differ more than the three countries do. Use these starting patterns to spot which parts of your playbook need review for Spain.

If you come from the United States, what usually needs the most adjustment is pace and follow-up; there is more detail in the guide to adapting a US sales playbook to Spain and in the US to Spain corridor. If you come from the Dominican Republic, what usually needs the most adjustment is formalization: documentation, payment terms in writing and a buying process with more people; that is covered in the Dominican Republic to Spain corridor.

Take a hypothetical Dominican company that services industrial refrigeration equipment and wants to sell in Spain to food retail chains and to the agrifood industry. In its home market it grows through referrals, deals directly with owners and collects on flexible terms depending on the relationship.

Its first plan is the home-market plan: go straight to the general managers of the large chains. It stumbles in three places. The chains buy through vendor approval, a process the company has not documented. The maintenance contract is not decided by the general manager but by operations, with procurement and finance. And the prices were built for flexible collection, when the buyer expects fixed terms in writing.

The rethink changes the order. First wave: mid-sized agrifood companies in one specific area of the Levante, Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast, where the segment is concentrated and an installer partner is willing to make introductions. A decision-maker map per segment, with the operations director as sponsor and finance as the role to convince. Prices in euros, with payment terms inside the legal framework and the cost of confirming built in. Vendor approval documentation prepared in parallel, with its lawyer and tax advisor, for the second wave. And a signed baseline before starting, so leadership knows what counts as progress and what does not.

There is no result to report, because it is an example. What it shows is that the product did not change: the entry segment, the order and the way of reducing perceived risk did.

Treating Spain as a single market. The result is sales effort spread across the whole map and no region with enough density to generate references.

Starting with the large account. It is tempting because it brings visibility. But vendor approval and the long cycle eat the first-year budget, and the team ends up with neither customers nor a reference.

Setting the price without the collection period. With fixed payment days and confirming, the real margin can be very different from the plan.

Asking the people who execute to decide the strategy. The agency, the distributor or the sales rep hired in Spain executes what they are given. If nobody decides segment, region, order and measurement, each of them decides on their own. That is why we separate who directs from who executes. The client decides. We direct. Third parties execute.

1. Sort your target accounts in Spain into small, mid-sized, large and public sector, and decide in writing which is the first wave. If the answer is "all of them", you have not decided yet.
2. Pull the annual accounts of three prospects from the Commercial Registry and note their average payment period to suppliers. Use it to review your price and your terms.
3. Run the risk-signal table against your website, your standard proposal and your contract. Mark every signal you find and who fixes it.
4. List the five references a Spanish buyer could call. If you cannot reach five, your first commercial goal is to get them, not to bill.
5. Review your vocabulary and your follow-up cadence with someone who has sold B2B in Spain. Change anything that sounds like another market before the first contact.

If you want to do it with a method, entering Spain starts with the diagnostic phase of market strategy and becomes the local layer of the commercial playbook. The rest of our work on the Spanish market is in Spain.